"Know how I know it's summer around here, when the population swells from 5,000 to 12,000?" asked Drunk Man as he ambled unsteadily up the road, focusing on the Wal-Mart a half mile ahead. He still found it hard to believe his rapscallion of an ex had tracked him down here, had arrived from the opposite coast without so much as an e-mail announcing her intentions. It was an interesting break in the routine, considering they'd exchanged death threats the last time they'd spoken several months before.
"Because you're drunk?" Young Mellow Emo Hater asked.
"Because there are attractive women here over the age of 21; adults of the species who are not overweight and whose breasts point horizontally more than not," said Drunk Man. "And God help me, I find myself looking at them and, though not ogling or scheming, at least reacting with that familiar inward remark of, 'That's nice and yummy, and I believe I might like to talk to it or even touch it!'"
"That's original," said Young Mellow Emo Hater, quietly loosing a stream of flatulence as they walked along the gravel shoulder of this podunk highway. Traveling always made her gassy.
"This is only human and seemingly not a problem," Drunk Man prated on. "But it's a sign that if I do move to Tallahassee and its campus of 20,000 female college students, my mind is going to be under seige. Here, it's easy to declare myself cut off from any inclination toward relationships, hookups, and all other forms of sexual or romantic interaction. But once I'm around normal people again, I'm going to have to be extremely vigilant about my own motives and drives, which I wish I could crush with hypnosis or otherwise benign drugs." He fetched a plastic one-liter vodka bottle from the pocket of his chambray shirt and had deftly dumped several ounces down his throat before Young Mellow Emo Hater could even notice, much less complain. She was his guest, kind of, so she reluctantly had to play by his rules anyway. He thought.
"If I succumb to the urge to socialize with the opposite sex, no matter how nimbly I rationalize this at the time, I will --"
"Do you know stupid you sound?" Young Mellow Emo Hater asked, sounding honestly curious.
"No, I know how stupid you sound. If I get another girlfriend, I will soon have at least one brand new enemy and perhaps be drunk and suicidal to boot. That's how it works for us outlier-f*ckups, and this has been established beyond any doubt."
My f*cking God he's impossible. She watched as he hoisted the vodka bottle again, slugged, winced, wiped his mouth and drew a bead on the vista in front if them. She suddenly understood for the first time in her twenty-six years why it made perfect sense to love someone and want to kill him at the same time. It was some kind of evolutionary glitch, she figured; no different than the other unreasonable side effects of consciousness and emotion, like religion and rap music.
"So I need to be in the habit of confessing to urges to meet people at levels other than those required by work interactions, and in bringing this up I'm trying to establish that habit now -- it's no different in principle than teaching oneself to call an AA/NA sponsor when cravings for substances arise."
"Which you do with alacrity," she snapped, using a "Dictionary.com Word of the Day" from roughly two weeks ago.
"Look," Young Mellow Emo Hater said. "I have to admit, being with you did help me in one major way. I'm at least as prone to ruminating about my problems as you are, and I did eventually come to see that it's a bad habit -- an easy one to develop, but it doesn't help in the least to keep repeating these things over and over and over... all the 'optimism' you've heard from me recently is an attempt to abolish self-obsessed ruminating, and it has helped me --"
"Well see that's not such a bad solution either," he said gravely. His gait was no more or less steady than when they'd left his apartment 20 minutes earlier, but he did seem to be slurring a little now. Who knew how much he'd had before she'd gotten there that morning. Here it was 80 degrees, dry and clear and bright as a bell, andDrunk Man was probably on the verge of needing an astronomical chart to find the damned sky. Worse, he was pretending to know things again. Best to let him ramble until either the tears started or their clothes came off.
"I don't see finally committing to something designed to keep me out of trouble as counterproductive," he said. "There's a difference between ruminating about something and trying to combat it, just as there's a difference between sitting around thinking 'I'm a worthless turd' and going to counseling or support groups." He looked at her with ersatz craftiness, a boozy gleam in each bloodshot eye. "I am a worthless turd, sir."
"I don't believe for a second that if an opportunity arises to get involved with someone, you will pass it up... but, of course, I could be wrong," Young Mellow Emo Hater said.
"Well, if I were 100% sure I could just not do something, I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, I'd just not do it!" Drunk Man blared. He had to yell because a semi was passing them from behind; the road, while not busy in general, was travelled mainly by eighteen-wheeled trucks heading to or from a nearby industrial park, where most of the people who lived here and held jobs worked.
"Relationships are only bad if you drink, Drunk Man. When you say all of this stuff about never needing to be in a relationship again it just sounds like self-pity."
"Think so, Young Mellow Emo Hater?" Drunk Man asked airily. "That's where we differ. You're no more in a position to assert such a thing than I am to tell you that you really want to work in customer service all your life." Young Mellow Emo Hater hated people and would sooner work in a flaming shityard than as, say, a waitress. She also was at war with herself much of the time and had most recently worked at an Olive Garden.
"Relationships are unconditionally bad, not just for me but for everyone," Draunk Man declared. He was at the point he eventually got to every time he got going, drunk or sober; he'd start by pretending he was unique and that his hateful, spiteful assessments pertained only to him, but the truth -- that he eitherwanted or expected the worst for and from everyone thanks to his own bitterness -- inevitably reared its head. He got off on it. She hated him for it and understood why he drank.
"Unless someone rids the world of alcohol, I'll be drunk every time I make a new lady friend," he said, beaming now. "And unless I get castrated I'll always be susceptible. Drinking and intimacy are wrapped up in the same mishmash of inner turmoil, you see: I don't like people in general, but drink over myself much more readily than I drink over others because, while I gave up on myself long ago, I tend to give others a token chance."
"Token is right," Young Mellow Emo Hater muttered. They were about an eighth of a mile from the Wal-Mart now.
"Indeed it is; indeed it f*cking is." While attempting to put his sunglasses on, he snapped them in half on the bill of his San Francisco Giants cap, and the pieces tumbled to the ground. "Shit," he said not breaking stride. "Well, it's not self-pity if I don't care about 'missing out"' on something I don't want anyway. For unclear reasons you think I'm bellyaching about this. You're said yourself you aren't interested in relationships either, and it never occured to me to accuse you of self-pity."
She said nothing. Didn't look at him, until he said "Hey."
She turned, and with shocking nimble-footedness (as she would later relate to the police) Drunk Man darted into the road in front of a semi that was doing maybe fifty-five miles an hour. There was no horn, no yelling, no real sound except a weak but decisive thud, and by the time the truck's driver nailed his brakes Young Mellow Emo Hater woman had passed out in a heap in the weeds adjacent to the shoulder.
